Atheism, Evolution, Skepticism

The Platypus is not a Chimera

One of the things evolution rules out is chimeras – animals that are mixes of two or more different animals. Evolution is a theory of descent with modification, and since animals can only mate if they are the same species, it means the offspring will have the genome of its (nearly identical) parents plus a few mutational changes (i.e. the modification). There are plenty of chimeras in mythology though: mermaids, centaurs, minotaur, pegasus, and the greek lion/dragon/goat chimera.

I’ve heard a number of creationists counter this by claiming that the platypus is a chimera – it has hair like a mammal, lays eggs like a reptile, and a bill like a duck.

For example, AnswersInGenesis says:

The platypus is an animal with a bill like a duck, and a beaver-like tail, it has hair like a bear, webbed feet like an otter, claws like a reptile, lays eggs like a turtle, and has spurs like a rooster, and poison like a snake. You can see why scientists first thought it was a fraud. But, the platypus is a real problem for the evolutionists. You see, they believe animals have evolved into other animals over millions of years. So, the question is: now which animal did the platypus evolve from? It would have to be just about everything. I think that every time an evolutionist looks at the platypus, I believe God must smile. Maybe He created it just for them. (Link)

Or here:

Monotremes are a scientific puzzle if you are an evolutionist. They are clearly mammals because they have milk glands, hair, a large brain, and a complete diaphragm. Yet they also resemble reptiles and birds in that they lay eggs, their blood temperature is influenced to some extent by their surroundings (as is reptiles’), and the platypus’s bill is like a duck’s. (Link)

(1) The platypus’ bill is not like a duck’s bill. It “resembles a duck’s bill but is actually an elongated snout covered with soft, moist, leathery skin and sensitive nerve endings.” (Link) Further, the platypus bill is covered with electroreceptors, enabling them to detect prey hidden in the mud (something ducks are not known to do).

(2) The platypus has poison spurs, but that doesn’t mean its venom is anything like snake venom. Lots of animals – including spiders, scorpions – have venom, but that doesn’t mean they all gained their venom from a common ancestor. Rather, they all evolved it independently, which is why, biochemically, the platypus venom does not resemble venom in any other animals: “platypus venom is a cocktail of toxins, most of which is a mixture of proteins which resemble no other to date.” (Link) On the other hand, genetic studies of snake venom shows that their venom is just modified versions of an original venom that appeared millions of years ago. (And, interestingly, they share this venom with a few legged reptiles – revealing that venom first evolved while snakes’ ancestors still had legs.)

(3) The Platypus lays eggs, “like a reptile”. Actually, the platypus is part of a family of animals called monotremes. The only other living animals which belong to this group are spiny anteaters. Monotremes existed before placental mammals or marsupials. Those branches of mammals appeared later, and became the dominant mammals. A diagram of their relationship through time would look like this:

Giving birth to live young is something that placentals and marsupials do, but the laying of eggs is something that mammalian ancestors (i.e. reptiles) did. What’s interesting, then, is that monotremes resemble the patterns of earlier, reptilian ancestors. They have retained the traits we would expect of an early mammal. This isn’t the only similarity monotremes have with reptiles:

So, the platypus seems like a mixture of reptilian and mammalian traits because it branched from the mammalian tree very early, but retained many of the ‘early mammal’ traits. Other features – like the venom, bill, electrolocation, and flat tail were evolved after the branching occurred, and this is backed up by the fact that their physical and genetic structure is very different from similar structures in snakes (venom) and ducks (bill).

Here’s how the diagram might look:

Now, you might be thinking – gee, that looks like the nested hierarchy one would expect from an evolutionary process. You’re right. Not only does it show the gradual accumulation of “mammalian” traits, but it is similar to the tree produced in Talk Origin’s 29 Evidences for Macroevolution. Creationists, like AnswersInGenesis and Kent Hovind get all the facts wrong and play on people’s ignorance by claiming that the platypus is somehow a problem for evolution. It isn’t. It fits with evolutionary theory.

[…] the rest of the Bible is true”), Ken Ham is the same man I quoted a few days ago in “The Platypus is not a Chimera” making this ridiculous comment: [T]he platypus is a real problem for the evolutionists. You […]

The “eggs” are actually interesting in themselves in the sense that if you think about them, they provide some insight on how the transition from egg laying to live birth is actually not as big of a gap as it might seem. The eggs are somewhat leathery, like reptile eggs, but less so, and they incubate for only a little over a week at most, spending the bulk of their time developing in utero. In short, they help illustrate that eggs are not that far off from what would happen if a placenta was birthed intact, and had a slightly thicker external skin… and live births are not that far off from simply retaining the “egg” inside without developing any extra thicker external coating.

Uh — are you talking about the chimeras that form when zygotes fuse in the womb: “In zoology, a chimera is an animal that has two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells that originated in different zygotes”?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)

[…] But instead of our “divine creator” inserting these enhanced traits into the “pinnacle of creation”, our genome is just a few percent different from chimpanzees, with no obvious insertions of any additional traits (which would be difficult to explain from an evolutionary perspective). Like I said earlier, there are no chimeras. […]

Thank you for clarifying some of the characteristic questions that really ARE unique to the platypus. I would still ask, “How do know?” Where is the evidence that any other animal ever birthed a platypus?

You can’t explain all the features of the platypus with your rootless* evolutionary tree (watch out it might topple over), so instead you speculate on a convergent evolution of similar features. Not only do you propose that the General Theory of Evolution can produce one sensible feature by chance (ie, outside of observable adaptation and gene de/activation), but that it can occur on 2 or more separate occasions… how gullible are you?

There is nothing unfactual about what is written by Answers In Genesis. The basic facts are the same as those evolutionists use… it’s just that evolutionists then go on to call their speculations ‘factual’. How very unscientific!

PS. I have a tertiary background in science and medicine, and the more I study science, the more the case is made for Creation. My refutation of evolution stands firmly on my knowledge of factual science.

*Rootless as in ??origin of life, ??origin of code, not to mention ??origin of cosmos

lolajuice you’re an idiot. Your knowledge of “factual science” must be more wobbly than you claim the extremely robust theory of evolution (by natural selection) to be. It’s your feelings against a century of scientific progress.

Answers in Genesis does not deal with facts, only ignorant conjecture. They’re biased towards a creation myth that no rational person has a reason to believe. The generic possibility of a creator does not prove the bible.

Evolution is driven by the laws of the universe so there’s nothing inherently intelligent about it. Uneducated people with a religion they want to believe will of course start at the end result and claim that it must be a god. Logic is not derived from intelligence, intelligence is capable of logic.

Also, evolution does not explain the origins of life, nor should it have to. Saying that it depends on that, or even worse that it depends on cosmological origins, says a lot about how much you understand science (not a whole lot).